Original subtitles

- We wanted to find out what some of our peers thought.

So we asked a few PHS students.

(static sound)

(slow calm music)

(strong winds blowing)

- Well, here's our house,

(fire crackling)

everything around us is on fire.

Oh man this is bad.

Can't really see very well, oh man, this is bad.

There goes our house, it's all engulfed now.

(fire crackling)

Well, don't know what to say,

just thought I would video this in case it's the last time

some of you guys see me.

- [Ev Durán] For my entire life,

whenever someone asked me where I was from

and I would respond, "Oh, I'm from Paradise,"

they would always look at me kinda weird.

They're never really quite sure what to do with that answer.

So they'd say something like, "No... really?"

And I'd say, "Yeah, no, really, it's a town,

it's called Paradise." And they'd laugh and tell me

they thought I was joking and I'd smile

that same polite smile that we all have

when you're in a conversation you've had

a thousand times before, and the follow up question

would always be, without fail,

"Well, is it really Paradise?"

- Here on this area and like here

where the trees are around,

but don't go any further than that okay,

'cause there's (indistinct)

- [Ev Durán] This is the Rauscher family.

Parents: Richie and Savannah,

kids: Anneliese and Richard.

On November 8th, 2018, the Camp Fire

took their entire home and everything in it.

For the kids, this is their first time visiting

their property since the fire.

- What do you think?

- It's still good, just put a net.

- Yeah, just put a net in it, clean it off a little bit.

- Yeah, it's a little rusty, maybe paint it red.

- Nah, leave the paint, just put a new net on.

- Am I allowed to touch it?

- Nah, I wouldn't touch it, not without gloves on.

There's something else I wanna show you.

(metal creaking)

Yeah, stay there.

Hey bud,

all three of our face cages.

- Wait, where's my hockey bag?

- Dude, your hockey bag did not survive.

Did you wanna try and move some of the roof

to look for the ring?

- Yeah.

(moving metal)

- [Ev Durán] The Rauschers are here today

hoping to find Savannah's wedding ring,

buried somewhere in the twisted metal and mucky ash

that was once their family home.

- Watch for nails.

- This ceramic thing, is that the toilet?

- Maybe, what was this, do you know?

- No, it's so weird there's so much stuff

but I can't figure out what the hell it is.

- It could be stuff that was

part of the attic's construction, so.

- I was like, oh my gosh, this ring set

is the most beautiful ring set I've ever seen,

I just love it, it was like from the 1930's

and it was like very vintage, it's beautiful.

And then Richie went back and the jeweler remembered

that I liked this ring and so Richie was able to

literally the exact ring that I wanted

without me knowing or...

- You guys come and check this out down here.

Check out our new view.

- Is this where the fire came up?

- Yeah, it came up from this way.

- Dad wait, where's Concow, is it like?

- It's way in that direction.

Watch your step.

- What is this?

Oh, this is part of Richie's computer.

It's got like, there's some kind of circuits.

It's been an ongoing, it's very ongoing.

Everyday you hear about somebody moving.

(slow eerie music)

You think of something that you left behind

that was sentimental to you.

Some days you feel so happy and grateful

and then other days you feel like you can't stop crying.

It's like mourning a death.

I have lost someone very close to me in my life

and it was very similar to that kind of grief.

It was like very much that level of heartbreak

to lose Paradise.

(slow instrumental music)

(indistinct)

- Claim your space.

- Where's Max?

- It's video, you can move.

- It's Christmas Eve and I'm in Aptos

and we're celebrating Christmas here at a home

we rented, it's near the beach.

We've never done this before.

- Do you wanna film me screaming at my kid

to get him in here for dinner?

It's about to happen.

- Get in here!

- Hi Clayton.

- You should probably get his name right

if you're gonna make a real run at Klay Thompson.

- It's not Thompson. I thought it was Thomas.

- No, it's Thompson.

Clayton Thomas is not a basketball player.

- That is who I was talking to online.

- Klay Thompson, Thompson.

- I don't think we're coordinated.

We shoulda rehearsed.

- Good luck, Ron Howard.

- So our family tradition has been,

at least for the last 27 years that I can count

is that everyone comes to my home for Christmas.

But it was obvious then that we weren't gonna have

Christmas in Paradise, which is hard

because that's sort of just part of the family fabric.

And you know, when you're facing change, you think,

'well, it's never gonna be the same,

that's not the way we do it.'

And it's turned out to really be very lovely.

Oh my gosh, it's beautiful.

It's bittersweet because we miss the Paradise Christmas

but this is a beautiful place too

and hopefully in another year or two or three,

we'll be celebrating Christmas in Paradise again.

- [Ev Durán] Despite the historically destructive fire

just six weeks earlier

there was a version of Christmas in Paradise.

The annual ice skating rink was built

and many traveled a great distance

for this small taste of familiarity.

For many of these suddenly homeless people,

this was their first time visiting the town

they love since it was almost completely destroyed.

- Thank you for coming and what a great time to be here,

it's so fun to see people and I don't know,

I don't shake hands much anymore, seems we hug each other

more than anything else, have you noticed that?

- Five, four, three, two, one, woo,

(crowd cheering)

- [Ev Durán] While it may seem like a simple event

from an outside perspective,

even something as inauspicious as a community

Christmas tree lighting feels like a tremendous victory

for these residents.

For the people of Paradise, like the Rauschers

and Susan Davis, chaos and uncertainty

are now the defining characteristics of every single day.

In the span of a few short hours,

on a day seemingly like any other, their homes gone,

their things gone, their jobs gone,

their entire sense of community and history

and even reality itself, gone.

What would you do?

How do you replace Paradise?

(slow calm music)

People are drawn to live in Paradise

for a great many reasons.

For Susan it was an opportunity for her and her husband

to move their young family from the Bay Area

to a smaller, safer community.

A great place to raise kids and someday retire.

In 1991 they did just that.

Her daughter, 11 years old at the time,

wasn't particularly thrilled at the prospect of leaving

all of her friends behind and starting over.

But her son, who had just turned seven, was excited,

like, super excited.

And I can tell you that with confidence

because that handsome little second grader was me.

I'm Susan's son, my name is Ev Durán,

I made this movie, hi.

And it's true, I can always remember loving Paradise.

My earliest memories of the town

are visiting my uncle and aunt and cousins in the eighties

and being completely transfixed by how green everything was,

how many trees there were, how the roads were all so hilly.

I thought driving through Paradise

was like being on a roller coaster.

To a little kid from San Jose, Paradise seemed

like a far away magical town in the forest.

We first lived in a rental on lower Sawmill until my parents

bought our house on Starlight Court, off of Neal Road.

We lived there for seven years and I loved that place.

- I'll save you!

- I made a lot of really good Kung Fu movies

with my friends in the garage.

When my parents divorced, my mother and I moved into a home

she bought on Sesame Street.

Yes, Sesame Street.

See uh, this here's the kitchen.

It's a small street off of Dean Road on upper Pentz.

It's where my mother has lived since.

I attended Paradise Elementary School,

Paradise Intermediate School and in 2002,

I graduated from Paradise High School.

- Senior pranks, have they gone too far?

- Paradise was a wonderful place to grow up.

I loved weekend visits to All the Best Video,

or summer days spent swimming at local river spots

or being dragged behind a boat at Lake Oroville.

- Oh shit.

- I loved riding my bike with my friends to Hootch Hut

for candies and sodas or hanging out at the Duck Pond

or at the hot trails or at the Safeway parking lot.

I loved going to Paradise High School Football games and

feeling the unmatched energy of an entire town at my back.

I just loved it all.

And although some of my particular affections for the town

might just be specific to me.

The general sentiment of loving Paradise

is almost universal, trust me.

I've talked to a lot of people.

(water flowing)

But for those of you watching who aren't from Paradise,

you probably won't know any of these things.

You might not even know where Paradise is.

- I knew nothing about Paradise, as a matter of fact

I had to look it up on a map.

- We'll get back to him though, he's a good guy.

Here's a little background on the town of Paradise.

Just the basics that you need to know.

To tell you about them I'm gonna turn you over

to Mark Thorp, the Executive Director

of the Golden Nugget Museum,

the town's primary historical archive.

Mark, in true small town Paradise fashion

also happens to be my cousin.

Here he is in 1987, helping me put my shoes on.

And here he is today.

- Paradise being in the foothills

of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a town of 26, 27,000 people,

which grows at about 3% per year,

cooler by about five degrees from the valley floor.

Close enough to a lot of international activity

associated with the Chico State Campus

a university town of Chico.

But still just 10 miles away where you could come back up

to the community and again seeking out

the quiet, kind of slower paced life.

I love Paradise because it's a beautiful area.

You are close to any river you'd like to go to,

you're close to the mountains, you're close to the valley.

There's a lot of history in this area

and I kind of like researching the history

and being able to go explore these places.

- [Ev Durán] Jason's right, there is a ton of history

in this area.

I'm actually ashamed to admit that I didn't know that much

about it, at least not until I started making this film.

Guys like Donald Criswell helped set me straight.

- I think this was a little known,

little explored area until John Bidwell came here.

He led the first wagon train into California.

Paradise still was the outback.

It was on the way to Butte Meadows and Colby Meadows,

where cattle pastured in the spring and summer months,

then they were brought back down into the valley

in the fall by ranchers like Clark and Neal and Pentz.

Paradise was kind of on the way and then the Gold Rush hit.

- [Ev Durán] In 1859, a 54 pound gold nugget,

the largest ever found, was discovered in the rivers

surrounding Paradise, making the town a popular place.

- There were still mines when I was a kid being worked

in Paradise actually, down off of Bille Road

and, Lucky John mine for example,

(loud explosion)

- Wow.

- But it was such a beautiful place to be.

The climate certainly is like the best in the world

or right up there with it.

And it turns out that you can roll up a newspaper

and stick it in the ground in Paradise and it will grow.

I mean, it's a great fertile agricultural place.

- [Ev Durán] Orchards sprung up all across Paradise

and the area was soon populated by ranchers and farmers

- Among one of those first early ranchers

was this gentleman who came up what's now Neal Road.

I live right off of Neal Road and as they arrived into

town, it gets to be a 100° in Paradise sometimes

he apparently plopped down under a tree and said,

boys this is Paradise.

And that's the version that I believe

is probably most accurate.

The other one was the old mining thing,

the pair o' dice, you know that two dice

that you roll on the table.

Yeah, I don't know.

- [Ev Durán] No matter how the town got its name,

the name stuck, it felt appropriate.

As Paradise evolved into and throughout the 20th century

it became an appealing place to raise a family

for people from all walks of life.

- I'm Dorothy Fallen and this is my husband, Don Fallen.

We moved to Paradise in 1962.

We lived in Chico and we used to go up to Paradise

so we could bowl on their four lane bowling alley on Skyway.

And they had a nice drive-in theater back then

that we really enjoyed so we spent a lot of time

going to Paradise.

And when the kids got old enough for school,

we moved up there and Don,

his parents followed construction.

He didn't want his kids to be moved from school to school.

So he always said, when they start school

we was gonna stay in one place.

So he says we can starve to death in Paradise

as well as anywhere else, that's where we're staying.

When we moved there, there was 9,000 people.

There was... - On the whole Ridge,

there was two four-way stop signs,

one at Pearson and Clark

and one at Elliott and Skyway, wasn't it.

There was no stoplights or anything like that.

And it's changed a lot.

- [Ev Durán] Even as Paradise changed and grew

it never lost that small town spirit

that so many of its residents loved.

- You have groups of families

that have been born and raised here

over generation over generation.

So even though you may not know the person next to you,

your grandparents may be friends with their grandparents,

which automatically connects you.

- From you know a demographic standpoint

I think a lot of people equated it to a retirement

community, I don't know if that's a

fully accurate description.

It was a vibrant town, there were lots of people

there from different generations

and different walks of life,

but all in all, a great small town,

American community filled with some really great people.

- You could go down the road and wave at people

because it was small enough that you'd see lot of say

it five or six cars you'd at least

know one or two of the people.

- You could walk down the road

and people would smile and wave to you

instead of looking at you like this

and putting their head down.

- It was beautiful, the trees, it was a forest.

It was a very close knit, small town.

So just the fact that everybody knew everybody,

everybody was friendly, I just fell in love with it.

We would tell people even on trips

or when we lived on the East coast

we would describe it as this really pretty,

super clean, that we'd always say the tap water tastes like

bottled water, there's this really no litter,

just the cleanest air and very nice people,

but a little bit remote.

But I liked how free it felt.

That was the big thing as we would always tell people,

you know, we live on this road and there's horses going by

and we have a bear that knocks our trash can

over every night and people's chickens come in our yard

and things like that.

- But the beauty was in the trees and the hills,

we had the canyon like on one side was the Feather River,

the other side we had Butte Creek Canyon

so that's the reason why we call it the Ridge.

- Beautiful and amazing, wonderful place to grow up.

I always told people that you had a lake below you,

lakes above you, a canyon on both sides with rivers,

like a childhood dream.

You could go hunting up in the mountains

and then Chico was eight miles away so you could get

some city life if you wanted.

- And it was a place where your kids,

they'd get up in the morning, they'd get on their bicycles

they'd run down to Kunkle Lake, fish all day, you know,

run around town, come home.

You didn't worry about anything happening to them, you know,

you knew they'd be home in time for dinner.

- [Ev Durán] What were some things, pre-fire obviously,

either landmarks or businesses or just like Paradise things

that you guys really liked?

- Oh wow, well right off the bat, Juice & Java, yeah.

- Juice & Java.

- Of course Juice & Java.

- I went to that coffee shop for literally, gosh 20 years.

- We grew up going to Juice & Java,

going to Juice & Java in high school,

skipping class to go to Juice & Java.

- And now were able to take our daughter there

to get a smoothie.

- [Ev Durán] For many people in Paradise

Juice & Java was an institution. Delicious coffee,

tons of seating, stellar personalized service...

J & J was a favorite of Paradisians of all ages.

The owner is a man named Geoffrey Greitzer

and I've known him for what feels like forever.

My older sister used to work at Juice & Java

when I was a kid and Geoffrey would sometimes come

to our family birthday parties.

Here's a picture of he and I at my mom's 40th in 1997.

I'm dressed as a clown for some reason...?

When I got older, I worked at Juice & Java for five years.

It's probably my most favorite job I've ever had.

Geoffrey is a character through and through

and never boring.

I'll let one of my former co-workers explain a bit further.

- Oh Geoffrey.

You know, when I sat down for my interview,

which was on the spot, I was not expecting it.

But I walked in and he sat me down and interviewed me,

I was not prepared for it all, my now mother-in-law

was in the car waiting for me and so I'm like,

can I go tell my ride that I'm going in for an interview?

But during the interview one thing that always stuck with me

is he looks at me and he says, "I'm a Gemini,

and I'm a childish asshole."

And I was like, who says that during an interview?

And he definitely could be, which I'm okay saying,

he said it himself, so I'm just not arguing with him.

But he also, Geoffrey has a huge heart.

- [Ev Durán] And I can vouch for that.

Geoffrey once reached into the cash register

and just gave me $900 to buy a truck, like out of the blue.

- I think when you can work anywhere

and you kind of feel like it's a family,

that's not something that everybody gets.

And for Geoffrey, I think that, that was really big for him

is to be able to support each other.

- Hello, I'm Geoffrey Greitzer, owner of Juice & Java.

I've been here 23 years, I've been in Paradise 24

and built this restaurant 23 years ago

and this is what it looks like now.

It's, lost everything, we lost two businesses

with this building and our house

and a lot of great memories.

When this fire came down I heard a lot of comments

from ex-employees and how much they miss this place

and how much it meant to them.

'Cause it was a pretty tight group.

It wasn't just, hey, I'm going to work,

the boss is an asshole, blah, blah, blah.

You know what I'm saying? I'm sure there was plenty of that

but there was, God the memories, the different,

some of the things... going bowling together,

getting a limo with all the employees

and going out for Christmas dinner

and employees projectile vomiting at nice restaurants

and things like that, oh yeah.

I wanted to create like a "Cheers" type of atmosphere

where people would know everybody.

And that definitely came to fruition.

I mean, it's great to feel that close to the community

and it's quite an honor to have that opportunity.

- [Ev Durán] If it's not obvious from the look

on Geoffrey's face, Juice & Java shared

a special connection with the town of Paradise.

Many customers would visit every single day of the week.

And then when Friday rolled around and the sun began to set,

there was something else very important

to the people of Paradise.

- Well, it's a football crazy town obviously.

It's interesting with football because,

when I first got up there in the mid nineties,

they were not good, but people still came to games

- Go Bobcats!

- And then Rick came along and they started to win.

- I don't know the win/loss record

but we've been, in 20 years, we've been in the section

championship 12 times, we've won it six times,

we've been in the playoffs 18 years out of the 20

and we've won 10 league championships.

- And then it became something

you had to be a part of the football team.

It wasn't quite Texas football,

but there was a happening, right.

- Football was really, at least for my boy,

it was the reason he went to school.

It was the reason he got grades that were good enough

to stay on the football team.

It was really important to him.

- This whole town seems like they're so involved.

It's almost like a movie that you would see that,

it's Friday night, "Friday Night Lights,"

the whole town comes out.

- Those four seconds that we get in between whistles,

we were gonna get after people.

And we created a reputation that,

I mean, you heard all kinds of rumors

and oh, they're doing this up there, they're doing that,

no, we had a passion for the game.

- Whenever I thought of Paradise and now especially,

I think it's a football town, that's how I describe it.

Football is really important and it's important to me,

and it's important to the community, and to our high school.

- The culture was so great, what Coach Prinz built there

and it continues, to be able to sustain that

for that many years and have kids continually

coming through the program and bought in,

is something that's really special.

- [Ev Durán] So that's Paradise in a nutshell.

A pretty wonderful place to grow up.

Not perfect by any stretch,

like every town we had our problems,

but by and large, it was just a good place.

A tight knit town with a strong sense of community.

The kind of small town where high school football was King

or a local coffee shop could feel like

the center of the universe.

It was our own personal hideaway in the woods.

And I'd wager to say that most of the residents of Paradise

felt connected to one another, a part of a larger whole.

It was beautiful.

It was safe.

It was home.

There was only one real omnipresent threat to Paradise,

but you know that, that's why we're here.

- Oh, we always knew there was gonna be a big one.

(slow suspenseful music)

- During my tenure in Paradise,

I've probably had to evacuate at least four times

that I'm sure of.

- We knew we lived in a fire-prone area.

I don't think the fear consumed us,

but we were always aware of it,

there were always fires nearby.

- In my experience there was always fires around.

Nothing ever got close.

I kinda thought of Paradise to be like a safe haven

from all natural disasters.

That's truly how I looked at it.

Like no earthquakes, no floods,

no fire is gonna burn the whole town.

- When you have what's called the wildland urban interface,

which is basically building your homes in the forest,

there is a lot of risk.

We know the situation that we're in here is always been

a potential major wildland fire.

I always said, and many people would quote me as saying,

"Oh, chief, he always says,

it's not a matter of if, it's when."

- It's not if, but when.

- It wasn't if, it was when.

We all knew that it was imminent, there had been threats.

And if you look at it over an overlay,

over the last 150 years, you'll notice that

there have been several fires that have encroached upon

the plateau, which we are, between large canyons

that generate large winds.

- I frankly think I was a little too blasé about it.

Like, oh, it's not going to happen to us,

despite having been here in 2008.

(slow suspenseful music continues)

- [Ev Durán] In 2008, the Humboldt Fire,

started by an arsonist,

wreaked tremendous havoc on Paradise.

That fire destroyed 87 homes, 167 outbuildings

and over 100 vehicles.

For those of us who lived in Paradise at the time,

it was a truly frightening event.

When it was over, I can remember thinking, 'Man, I hope

that was the big one they've always talked about.'

- We were evacuated in 2008.

We were evacuated for about a week,

and I think everyone's awareness of fire

was really heightened that season.

- 2008 was a lot of ways a, I called it a close call.

Even though I'm sure the people who,

the 74 people who lost their homes in lower Paradise area,

don't feel like it was a close call.

From the standpoint of what the potential was,

it was a close call.

- The impact of that fire was maybe an eyeopener

for a lot of people.

- That I think was my first real experience with,

Oh my gosh!

We live on a mountain and we're kind of stuck here

type of thing, where I had not necessarily a fear,

but an enlightening moment, I suppose.

- 2008 was very scary.

And that's a time that many, many people

evacuated, including us.

In that particular instance, I think we were away from home

for several nights before the fire was eventually contained.

- In 2008, and I mean every square inch of this ranch,

and the 27,000 acres around it, burned...

if it wasn't rock or metal, it was ash.

10 years later, this place burned again.

- Normal day, about 6:30 in the morning,

I went out the front door and there was a plume of smoke,

coming in that corner over there.

And being here in Paradise, you're used to having fires.

And so that was a fire,

but didn't look like it was that ominous,

like the entire town was gonna be wiped off the map.

- So I was up probably by about quarter to seven,

I'd made coffee, sitting in my favorite chair,

and sipping my coffee, and just sort of looking back

over my shoulder, out through the windows,

toward the backyard and seeing it was so smoky.

- It started out as a normal day.

I have two morning classes, the first one starts at 5:00 am.

So got here, opened up the gym, do our workout,

6:00am another class comes in, by the time they're done,

I walk them out 'cause it's about 7:15, nice sunny day,

and we see a big cloud of smoke over there.

Because we're kind of immune to it, we're like,

oh, wonder where the fire's at?

But that was about it.

- About 7:30, we heard there was a fire

in the canyon, but didn't even think twice about that,

'cause there's always a fire in the canyon.

I'd gotten a text message about 7:30

from the Town Manager, something they'd passed on

from CalFire, that there was a fire at Pulga.

They were watching it and they were hitting it

with everything they had.

- I was listening to KCHO as I do every morning,

and they said, there's a fire in Pulga,

which wasn't particularly alarming because

that's so far away.

- The perspective was basically,

we're gonna just gonna do this again.

And then in fact, yeah, there are warnings

that are coming out, there are people, neighbors

coming by expressing concern, the fire's over in Pulga,

that's a distance away, we've seen this before

in different locations and treated it just like that.

- My son said,

"Mommy, I thought it was supposed to be sunny today."

And I said, "It is."

He said "But the sun's a weird color."

And I walked out and I said,

"I wonder if there's a fire," and I smelled the air,

and it was a little smoky.

And we get so many fires in Northern California

that I really wasn't that worried about it.

Fires all the way up in Shasta will sometimes make

the sun hazy or whatever.

- It seemed pretty relaxed.

I was a little scared that there's a bunch of smoke,

but nothing like out of the normal,

I didn't feel scared in any way.

- Me and my girlfriend woke up that morning

and we went outside and just heard

the wind going through the canyon like a freight train.

I turned to her and said, "This isn't good, this scares me."

- I was at home when I first learned of a fire,

wildfire up in the Pulga area.

And initially it didn't cause me a lot of concern

because that's a fairly remote part of the county,

it's not heavily populated.

But I did think to myself, I can't believe

it's November and we're having a wildfire.

(fire sparks crackle)

- The dynamics of this fire are really unique.

Picture this: a fire is burning to the east of Paradise.

It's burning in an area that has a significant fire history,

the Concow area, Yankee Hill/Concow area.

This fire had occurred from the same location and burned

in one night, it burned five miles back in 2008,

to the edge of Paradise,

there's a history of fire moving quickly.

Part of the dilemma of this fire was the fact that

most of those fuels had burned 10 years ago

and were in a 10 year, sort of ripe condition

because when a forest goes away,

it's replaced by lighter fuels.

So the regrowth that occurred over the last 10 years,

created a lot of fuel load.

So now this fuel load's on fire and what happens

with the fuel load, is that it was very dry,

record setting levels for the month of November,

ready to burn, under a heavy wind condition,

not just the Jarbo Gap wind which we locals know,

is a nightly occurrence in the summer,

but also a huge gradient wind

that was from a high pressure

to low pressure, that created a much higher stack

of wind. That comes into play

in that, when the fire developed in this really dry fuel,

it sends up a column.

In this case it went up with all that energy

and it hit somewhere around,

I'm gonna say about the 5,000 foot level.

It hit shearing winds that were probably exceeded

a 100 miles an hour.

Not the surface winds that were being measured at 42 to 45

on Jarbo Gap, but over a 100 mile an hour winds.

So this superheated air full of debris is sheared off

and launches thousands of embers

in a blowtorch that keeps them hot.

Because typically what happens with embers is that,

you'll get some ember fallout

and that ember fallout will ignite fires.

But as the air rises like a thunderstorm,

the fuels have an opportunity to cool.

And as they come back down, not near,

as many of them are, are hot embers.

Well, in this case, they were in the middle of a blowtorch

being launched by these above surface winds,

right at the town of Paradise.

(siren sounds)

We also knew because we have an elaborate evacuation plan,

had and still have,

that we had potential problems getting people out

because of the sheer number of people versus

the number of road options that we had.

- Concow, Magalia, and Paradise,

you're talking about maybe 60,000 people,

that's a lot of people to get out.

And Paradise isn't really built for a mass evacuation

at the very same time,

which is why they developed their plan.

This is why they did that 'cause they learned in 2008.

If you gotta get everybody out, it's gonna be a mess.

And it was.

- There were a couple of young men,

running through the nearby property

and they were yelling, "Fire! Fire! Get out!"

So I yelled back, "How close is it?"

And they said, "We can see the flames."

- You started to see cars kind of backing up on Skyway

or whatever and I was getting annoyed.

I'm like, what's going on?

Why are we already backed up on this road?

So I had to go up on the sidewalk to drive,

to get to my house, which is like five minutes from here.

- My daughter Brielle was born the morning before

on the seventh at 8:18, November 7th.

We were in the hospital & because I had to have a C-section,

I was hooked up to an IV, I was hooked up to a catheter,

I had only gotten out of bed once in the previous 24 hours.

- Then I heard it was at Ponderosa School at about 8:45.

And I'm like, uh oh, this is different.

- My 24 hour old baby and I were escorted outside,

we were put in the back of a Sheriff's vehicle.

And so I look over and you could just see the flames

coming over the canyon towards the hospital.

- And we could hear, like, the fire,

we could hear people screaming,

we could hear propane tanks exploding.

So I took one last picture of the house from over here,

right before we got in the car,

and, 'cause it dawned on me it would be the last time

that we'd see it.

- So if the fire was coming from the canyon,

it should have moved progressively, well it leapfrogged

and was into town very quickly.

- So I threw some clothes on over my pajamas and got the dog

and I grabbed an afghan of my mom's and I pulled out

and I could see in a distance that there was a police car.

And I thought, I'm gonna go check with him

to see how much time we have, like an hour?

He says, he said, "You have no time."

You have to get out.

- [Man] Holy shit dude.

Just be safe.

- Fly, fly, fly.

- Holy shit, holy shit.

- So it's just a mad panic to get out.

You have flames on your left and your right

and you see houses and trees and you can feel the heat

coming through the car.

- [Woman] It's so hot, it's so hot, keep going!

- It sounds like the whole world

was avalanching toward us.

It was the craziest sound I'd ever heard.

It sounded like Armageddon.

Exactly like I would picture Armageddon.

- It's getting darker and darker to a point where

it's now like black and you see the white ash coming down,

you're hearing more and more that popping.

People are all stuck, people are freaking out.

- [Woman] This is Pentz Road, this is Pentz!

- And I remember specifically one transmission

from a deputy talking about how the road was blocked

and they were being overtaken by fire,

they were gonna have to get out of their vehicles

and find a way to shelter in place.

I honestly believed that, that was the last time

I would ever hear that deputy.

(slow eerie music)

- You know the correct side to go down Skyway,

as you get past Neal then you start your descent.

And you can see the canyon, that's where the canyon starts.

You can see the fire and the flames right... and

people are just, trying to, like cattle going to slaughter.

I'm like, I don't think I want to get into that lane,

so I decided to go around a couple of cars

and go to the opposite way.

'Cause I know there was two lanes coming up

and emergency vehicles could still make it up.

So I scooted around and went that way,

I went, drove around, there was a little building,

maybe 200 yards, everything was clear,

and then everything changed.

Everything got dark, I mean completely black,

darker than night.

And then you see trees on both sides of the road,

just on fire and things flying over the road,

and you're looking everywhere,

and all of a sudden you're just surrounded by fire.

Like, well, wait a minute, I was just, oops,

I made a wrong turn.

That's what it felt like.

And so you had to keep driving, you can't get out.

So I start to drive through the fire

and you're kind of doing this and you're looking

'cause it's like, wow, this is,

the light bulb is starting to come on and

you're going, oh, wait a minute, this is dangerous.

And so I get around this little building

and there's an opening from this side of the canyon

to this side, whoom, there comes a tunnel of fire,

and it engulfs my car.

You can see it on the hood, the windshield,

behind you, I'm in a tunnel of fire, I'm thinking

oh my goodness, crap, I'm dead, I'm gonna die here.

Just keep driving, keep driving and keep driving.

And it's getting hotter.

And then now you're getting pelted by embers

that are the size of bricks.

You could hear it going,

(pounds hand with fist)

and your car is going, slowing down,

and I'm thinking, please my tires

don't pop, don't pop.

And then the other things coming up

were, you're starting to say, well, I hope the smoke

takes me first, before I die,

And I'm thinking, shit I don't wanna get out

and run in this thing. It's gonna hurt.

I don't want to stop and so

and when that fire came and hit my windshield,

your natural reaction is to duck because it's,

so I ducked and as I ducked under, I got this,

like tiger came out of me and all I could think about

was my son and I yelled out,

"Charlie! I'm not gonna die here!"

Sit up, put it in third gear, punched it,

I didn't care what I hit, I had to get out of the fire

'cause it was starting to get hot.

So I just kept going and going and going

and probably another 60, 70 yards

just before the Paradise sign with "all its name implies"

remember that one? I come out just a little bit past it,

actually, not before.

And it's open, it's clear, it's open.

Ah, yeeeeeeah!.

But to come out of that fire and, and to yell

like a banshee is like, oh, I made it.

And for a while there even though it wasn't such a,

it was just less than a minute.

It felt like an eternity because I'm pretty,

pretty sure I was gonna die.

I mean, just almost, just, yeah.

- My mom left to go get my brother and sister-in-law's

dogs and she forgot her phone.

So it was like, I don't know four and a half hours

of just like not knowing where she was

and just hearing that people are dying on Edgewood.

- I wanna say it was like this driveway here,

we were stopped and we had a clear view up it.

And we're just sitting here and waiting for the cars

to one by one merge on to Pearson.

And it was pitch, it was like midnight, it was so dark.

- We finally made it up the road to right in front of the

Lutheran daycare in time to watch that ignite.

And we sat there and watched it burn to the ground

with, the little girl I had just picked up from there

sat there and watched her school burn to the ground.

At that same time while I'm sitting there in traffic

with my two little girls,

I had a, she was a lady probably mid 40's or so

came running down the middle of Pentz Road by my truck,

screaming "There's people on fire back there!"

"There's people on fire back there!"

"Somebody help them, there's people on fire!"

- I was wondering how we were gonna make it out

and how fast the fire would come.

And if our, if we would have to get out on foot.

- [Woman] I'm not dying right here!

(fast dramatic music)

- There was a mobile home park over here

that was fully engulfed and watched that burn

and then we watched this side of the road start also,

and we just kind of watched it creep through these houses

and these yards getting closer and closer and closer.

Meanwhile, we're not able to go anywhere

we're just sitting there in the truck

kind of wondering if we were gonna be able to get out.

- You never want to, as a parent, look at your kids

and go, 'I don't know how to save you right now,'

like I don't...

And all I could think of as the fire was getting closer,

it was getting hotter and the car started overheating.

And I kept thinking like,

I'm gonna watch my kids choke and burn to death in front

of me and I don't know what to do.

Like, I don't know what to do.

- I sat there for, had to be 45 minutes

while the world was burning down around us.

And I had to think to myself,

'Am I really gonna sit here and watch

my girls burn to death?'

And that kind of

got me moving, and I wasn't going to sit there

and I wasn't gonna let that happen.

So I pulled off in to a little side road

where I wasn't going to block anyone in

and I got the girls out of the truck and I just said,

"Come on girls, we're going on a field trip."

And you know, they're scared out of their minds,

but I tried to make it as relaxed and fun as I could

while I'm panicking inside.

And we just walked up the road and kind of ran for a ways.

And we got, finally caught up to where my uncle was

in my grandpa's classic truck and he was,

20 cars ahead of us or so.

And I turned to him and I just said,

"I'm getting my girls outta here, if fire gets any closer,

you get out of here too, I love you."

And we took off, and I had to go up to my dad

who was ahead of all of them and say "Dad, I love you,

I'm getting the girls out here."

He said, "You're doing the right thing."

- And my son just said, "There's the fire."

And we looked, and you could just see,

like over the crest of that hill, it was just bright

and then you'd see like the flames kind of coming up

one by one and then after a moment just full-on flames.

- So we almost had to jump out of the car, but if we did

we'd probably burn up because the fire was right there,

like super close and was moving very fast.

- Richie, started saying,

"Why aren't we using this other lane?"

like, "there's nobody's coming back."

"You're an idiot If you're coming back at this point,

like you got, no one should be coming back to their houses."

And we look over and the fire was gonna catch all the leaves

and branches and bushes on the right next to us

and then the car was gonna catch on fire.

And so Richie said "Fuck this."

"We're not gonna die right here."

"We're not doing this" & he said "It only takes one person."

And he turned out in the lane and just hit the gas.

And he said it was terrifying, because he didn't know

we were on this hill, we couldn't see over the hill.

We didn't know if someone was going to be bombing down

the hill coming back into the neighborhood,

trying to get to their house and luckily there wasn't

and we looked behind us in the rear-view mirror

and just all the people started pouring into

the open lane behind us.

- And when we got up to the top of Edgewood,

the cars up here were just slowly merging on

one at a time, taking their time, waiting for someone

to give them an opening.

And while it's real nice to be polite,

they didn't realize how close the fire was back here.

And so we just cut in and started telling people,

"Make three lanes on Pearson, it's wide enough."

- I started knocking on people's doors and I was like

"You gotta make a third lane."

"You gotta get people out of here."

And they all started squeezing together

and squeezing together and we just kept going up cars

and beating on doors and I would tell people,

roll your window down and I would say,

"We gotta make a third lane," I said

"Edgewood lane is on fire we have to get

people off Edgewood."

- [Ev Durán] What did you think about the way

your parents acted on that day?

- They felt like heroes basically to me and I felt,

I just felt better that we were gonna get more people out.

And yeah, they just felt like heroes and that we've had the

chance at surviving this, which I didn't think before.

- It took us an hour and a half to get from our house

to outside of Paradise which is only about three miles.

And I can't imagine for the people that were in there all

day and you know, the people that never even made it out...

- Well, here's our house, everything around us is on fire.

Oh man this is bad.

Can't really see very well, ah man this is bad.

There goes our house, it's all engulfed now.

Well don't know what to say, just thought I would video this

in case it's the last time some of you guys see me.

It's kind of a weird feeling when you honestly think

you're gonna die.

Little update I guess, everything's exploded on this house.

I had only initially taken the video because

there was one time in particular where I could hear

the explosions and animals were running into me.

And I really thought I was gonna die.

I thought it was a really bad decision to stay up there.

And I figured if I made the video that Laurie would see it.

(slow music)

I don't know, it's kind of silly when I say it,

but a buddy of mine, Tom, he had dropped off a day or two

before, this little four by six trailer

and it was full of sod.

And when that one time when the explosions were loud,

it got dark and I really thought that

man this was it, I'm gone.

I rolled out that sod.

Here, got this little sod house right here and small hose,

keep watering it I guess, someplace to go.

And so I just wet down the sod and

I'd wet down underneath of it.

And I figured I would jump underneath there

and it would buy me about 15 minutes.

I said a prayer and figured well, if God wants me to die

it's my time, but apparently it wasn't my time then.

And I'm still here.

It's in God's hands now.

That's all the power I need,

We can always replace this material stuff

but you can't replace you. Amen.

(fire crackling)

- We started our evacuation at 7:45 in the morning

and I made it to Chico around 2:30,

met up with my daughter's mom and my step mom

and my girlfriend at the Raley's parking lot.

And we still hadn't heard from my dad and my uncle.

And I didn't see how they could have made it out

if they left after I did. I thought they had

possibly died to come save my travel trailer.

So that was very heavy on my mind

until about an hour and a half later

they finally made it down to Chico

and were able to give me a call and let me know

they were safe.

- We got separated, that was the toughest part was

I in this big box van weaseled through

and got down to Chico where we had talked

that we were going to meet and my wife wasn't there

I'm walking back and forth like at the bottom of the hill,

looking for her, like freaking out, pissed off at myself.

It was incredibly emotional, incredibly heart wrenching.

Just thinking that I had left her and so it worked out okay.

We found each other a couple hours later.

- So after about 2:30 was when they were able to start

flowing people out of the temporary refuge areas

between 2:30 and 3:30 I'll say the town

pretty much cleared out.

So from then on, I was just checking on what was left

and what was gone.

I remember the first time I gave them the answer

to how much do you think has gone and I said "80%."

I'm sure that was their, oh shit moment,

'cause they hadn't been there, right.

They hadn't seen it and they're going,

and you can hear it in their voice going "how much?"

And I said, "I think 80% is gone."

And that was, you know, the reality of it,

it got worse, actually.

(slow somber music)

- The operation to locate people who perished in the fire,

all told when it's all said and done, we used about

10,000 people from agencies throughout California

as well as five states.

They searched 18,000 locations, some of those locations

were searched twice.

We used coroners' investigators and law enforcement officers

and National Guard, Search & Rescue,

Urban Search & Rescue, firefighters,

forensic anthropologists, cadaver dogs,

all of those resources were brought together.

And as it stands today,

it looks like 85 individuals perished in the fire.

And I certainly don't want to discount

or lessen the traumatic impact of that fact,

but it does stand in stark contrast

to the number of people that had to be evacuated.

I mean I think the estimate is some 46,000 people

were evacuated out of the area.

And the fact that the fatality is 85 when you consider

how much worse it could have been is remarkable.

- As bad as it was & as how terrible it is to lose 85 lives

It's hard to use the term successful, 'cause I wouldn't

say it was successful, but it was,

let's just say it was probably better than most people

anticipated that day, knowing how many people lived up there

and how bad it was.

'Cause I remember sitting here a couple of days

after the fire thinking there's going to be at least

two to three thousand dead in this whole thing.

- I also thought that thousands of people were dead

because I thought once I got through that flame

then everything behind me was burning.

I that's what i thought and all these cars behind me.

- Just knowing how the fire was coming this way

I thought it was gonna engulf just every car on Pearson

that was behind us.

I'm really legitimately shocked that more people didn't die.

- I'm absolutely amazed that the fatality rate

is as low as it is.

It is sad that we lost people, absolutely.

- [Ev Durán] As of one year after the Camp Fire

here's what we know.

It is the deadliest and most destructive fire in the

recorded history of California, so far.

It immediately claimed 85 lives and is responsible for

taking at least several more since.

It burned over 153,000 acres and destroyed 18,800 structures

including 14,000 homes and more than 500 businesses.

The fire started on November 8th and was not formally

extinguished until November 25th, more than two weeks later.

The cause of the fire was a spark,

cast down to the dry earth from a poorly maintained

electric transmission line belonging to California

power giant, PG&E.

But in the days immediately following the fire,

we knew none of this, the people of Paradise

didn't know the full extent of the damage

and not being allowed to return to their town

they poured over their computers and their phones

for any news or status updates of their home,

their neighborhood, their beloved community.

- Honestly, I'm not even sure what day it was,

maybe it might've been day three.

It seemed an eternity, but I got a photograph

of my property and you just kind of drop to your knees.

- It seemed like an eternal waiting period

because even once we knew the status of the house,

and even once we had a photograph of that,

of course we were very eager, like many,

I would say not everyone, but many, many people

so eager to get up there.

And part of that is the hope that amongst the rubble

you'll find something.

(slow somber music)

- I went up on Saturday after the fire with CalFire

and I was not, I knew it was bad from what I had heard

and what have you, but I really didn't expect

the level of devastation that there was.

Driving through, it was like a total war zone.

- I lost everything, everything I had of my mom's,

everything from the day my kids was born,

the day we were married, everything.

When I went back up there I broke down

because it looks so terrible, you know all the burnin',

it was so bad.

It was nothing left, nothing.

- You know what's crazy is, to be fully honest it didn't

occur to me until two days after the fire.

I couldn't even process everything

I wasn't even thinking about and then one of my friends

said, "Oh man I'm so glad I grabbed my kid's baby books."

And the second she said that I just fell apart

and realized how much I had lost.

- We had hazmat suits and masks and gloves and booties

and goggles and tried to be as prepared as we could.

It was, as they said, very hazardous.

I mean shards of metal and glass and muck

because it had rained.

- I was able to take my camera into Paradise

about a week before the town re-opened to the public.

And this is video I took with my cell phone

as I approached my mother's home for the first time.

I can tell you firsthand your brain doesn't really

know what to do.

Mine felt like it was backfiring, sputtering,

trying to load.

I couldn't even really feel sad about what I was seeing

because it didn't feel like reality.

This couldn't be real, it's a mistake.

Someone is playing a trick on me.

This does not compute.

In the days following I was able to help my mom

dig through the ashes of what were once our things

and as I would look at my mom I would wonder,

what's going to happen to her?

Where's she gonna go?

- Hold on, hold on, we're gonna go this way,

We're gonna go this way, yeah, good girl.

Do you wanna go see Jim?

Just a minute, just a minute.

Okay go, oh, she's so excited.

And she's so good, she's so good

she just comes even off leash which we never do.

Hello, go see him, go see him.

- Yes, there he is, there he is.

- We have lived in a hotel of one sort or another since

November 9th and today is March 17th, St. Patrick's Day.

So, longer, well I shouldn't say that,

I was gonna say longer than we thought

but who knew what to think?

Nobody knew what to think.

If I stand in central location, I can show you the kitchen

and I can show you the dining area

and the great room, living room, family room,

den, dog place.

This is the office.

The secret to the office is there are lots of things

underneath the table, like a big box with all the FEMA

papers and all the binders with the insurance info.

And on top of the office you can see house plans

that are hopefully gonna be in the works soon.

So that's our next big step.

So when we were originally displaced

we were in a motel room which we were over the moon

thankful to have.

We were there for two months

and then we moved here at the Residence Inn.

So we have this whole living area and the bedroom/bathroom,

it's 504 square feet and it feels like a mansion.

We have just been so, so lucky.

- [Ev Durán] Under ordinary circumstances,

it may seem strange to consider being forced to live

in a hotel room for five months as "lucky."

But these aren't ordinary circumstances.

And my mother was incredibly lucky. For many others,

housing, temporary or otherwise, was far less certain.

Many, like my uncle, were forced to live in their cars

or in tent cities that sprang up in the parking lots

of Chico businesses.

Some, like Dorothy and Don and their large extended family,

were able to stay with relatives in the surrounding areas.

- We have approximately a 100 plus family members that

lived in Paradise and in our family alone 22 homes

were burned and lost, 22 families.

- So we've opened up our house after the fire

and we had out of the 22 families that lost their homes.

We had 11 of the families living here at one point

and some 45 people.

- [Ev Durán] As the months go by

these shell-shocked residents struggle to find

some degree of normalcy, which is exceedingly difficult

when nearly everything you've ever known has disappeared,

even those things you once thought indomitable.

(whistle blown )

- Hey, bring it up you guys.

Guys get on a knee.

Here we go, on a knee, let's go.

We're gonna get in six teams,

we're gonna have three games going on.

This is Ev Durán, he is a graduate of Paradise High School,

and he's doing a documentary on the Camp Fire

and we're gonna be a part of that, okay?

- [Ev Durán] The Camp Fire struck Paradise

one day before the High School Football Playoffs were set to

begin and PHS Football, with its players and coaches

scattered and homeless, was forced to forfeit their season.

Now, like the entire town, they face an uncertain future,

both as a school and as a team.

- Numbers wise we're about half the size, our school is

and that's the same with football players on campus.

A lot of adjustments every day, a lot of change.

You're not playing tackle.

- Damn.

They always say that.

- You guys are on film you bunch of mountain boys.

- We have a home game August 23rd and I think about it

every day right now.

And I know our kids do and our football team does.

- [Ev Durán] Despite having their first game back

at PHS on the schedule, there is no guarantee

that the campus will be ready.

- The kids have to be safe to be able to go up there.

So the trees, the water, the soil sampling,

things like that, has to be deemed safe.

The goal for the school is to have graduation

up there this year.

So if they get graduation up there,

I'll breathe a sigh of relief.

- PHS

- This is our old home, this is a business my wife and I

started, Custom Made CrossFit.

It's weird to be back, we haven't been here for a while.

We came right after the fire but now, what's it been?

- We had a bunch of house stuff in our attic,

like all of our house possessions up in our attic.

And so like one little coffee mug we found made it.

- Oh, there's another one right there.

- That's oh, that's the coffee mug.

- Oh, that's it.

- [Ev Durán] For too many residents of Paradise

like the Delgados and Geoffrey Greitzer,

they didn't just lose their homes, they lost their

businesses, their jobs, their financial security.

But yes, also their houses.

Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you didn't have a house

and you didn't have a job.

What would you do?

It's almost unfathomable.

But that's what these people are living through

every single day.

- We have been incredibly lucky,

blessed, compared to some other people around here.

We had insurance and we had, we ended up finding a place,

but there's a lot of people that didn't.

That's really tough, really, really tough.

The hardest thing was, or is, this was ultimately

gonna be retirement.

I just finished paying off this entire building, land

and everything.

This would be the entrance to the front of the building.

The first part, as you walked in you would

get the full experience of chocolate.

You would come into the store,

get that heavenly aroma of chocolate.

- [Ev Durán] Just like Geoffrey Greitzer,

Pam and Bill Hartley owned and operated a quintessential

Paradise business, Joy Lyn's Candies.

This iconic candy shop was known to collect

international awards for their sweets.

All of which were manufactured here at this location.

As you guys stand here right now,

I know this has to still be a little surreal.

How long, I mean, since the fire,

has it taken you to get to a point where you can,

I mean and maybe it's still not here,

but where you can be here and not just be overcome?

- Yeah, you go there a little bit

but then you can't spend a lot of time there,

at least for me and so I'll pop my brain back out of it

and visit it, like now I'm visiting it, thinking...

And then you can't talk.

- And I was saying that as we drove up today,

I said, you know, it's a little easier with every trip

into town as we drive through this devastation

to get a little more accustomed to it because

now we're seeing things cleared off,

now we're seeing good things happening.

And so some of that, the ugliness is all disappearing

and we're transitioning to another phase.

So it's a little bit easier, but we do have those moments,

that crying time where you just realize

how quickly life changes.

You're upside down in a couple of hours

and it's hard to sometimes go back and reflect on that.

You wanna try and keep your mind in a positive mode

and say, "What can we do now to help this town rebuild

and make it a better place than it was?"

"How can we be a part of that?"

And let's get active in doing that,

and then that keeps us in a positive frame of mind,

and we're able to deal with this a lot better.

- [Ev Durán] Pam and Bill have already picked out

a new location and are rebuilding Joy Lyn's in Paradise.

As the town continues its attempt to recover,

the people who are probably happiest

about every announced rebuild are the folks

who didn't have to themselves.

Almost everyone in Paradise lost their homes.

What about the people who didn't?

- What frustrates me is people say Paradise

was wiped off the map.

No, it was not wiped off the map.

I'm still here and a lot of people are still here

and Paradise...

- Still exists.

- Paradise is my home, and so it's like no,

we're not off the map, we're here.

We're clinging to the map and will continue to cling.

- [Ev Durán] For these people clinging to the map,

whose homes didn't burn, it's a uniquely confusing situation

that they find themselves in,

filled with a lot of conflicting emotions.

- It was hard for us, like "oh, that's great."

And we didn't share it with a lot of people

because we did have kind of that survivor's guilt.

It took us a while to really decide,

a lot of people were like, hey you guys need to just clean

your house up, because it was smoke damaged

and just get back up there.

And it's like well, there's no water,

we didn't get power for a long time

so how are you gonna start repairing a house?

- It's very strange being homeless.

It's really, to know you do not have anything to go back to,

but it's pretty final and I feel worse for people

that have their houses standing. I think that's a much worse

situation to be in, you can't reinhabit them right now,

they need to be repaired and you're in limbo.

- This finality that Savannah speaks of

can be a valuable thing.

For folks like her and my mom

who lost their homes and all their possessions

but we're fortunate enough to have good insurance,

they get to decide how they move forward.

They have that choice: rebuild, buy nearby,

or buy far away and start completely over.

But if you didn't lose your home, imagine that reality.

What if overnight your home was dropped into the middle of

an unrecognizable landscape,

far removed from the community you loved

and everything around you appears toxic and dangerous.

It's hard to imagine. Burned or spared,

there are no winners here.

- It's been tough.

It's been a battle financially with insurance,

they don't wanna pay for things that they should.

And so that's been really hard and then just the whole,

like the first week for me was really hard.

It sunk in and was like, this is our new reality.

Every window I look out, it's a war zone.

- Every day you're like, you just can't believe it.

You think it's got to get better, like easier,

but it doesn't.

- There's no family anymore around,

there's no neighbors, there's no friends,

a hospital if something happens, you know.

So that's been tough.

- You know and the decision's kinda made for you,

the one, our home survived.

Whether we would have been better off

if it had burnt, maybe.

- Yeah there was thoughts actually at times

it was like, you know what?

Make it easier if it was gone.

That's what I kept thinking because she kept telling me,

she's like "I won't, I can't go back, there's no way."

And there's still thoughts,

but we're so tied to the community,

this is where our life has been.

So how do you leave it?

- We'll never understand what it feels like

to have our home burn to the ground.

We'll never know that pain.

And I feel awful for everyone that went through that,

almost everyone I know.

And those people will never know

what it's like to live here

while the town tries to come back.

- [Ev Durán] Paradise is coming back,

but with a tragedy this monumental, the challenges facing

these resilient people are unprecedented

and far from over.

- We try to focus on the positive, like, looking at,

we lost trees but we gained views

or you know we lost this, but we're gonna gain this.

And it's like, you can focus on the positive all you want

but at the same time you're still living

in like a destruction zone and you have to see it.

We don't ever get to have like our normal daily life back.

- The longer people are out of the area

the more they settle into their new life,

in the new house, the new rental, they get into that mode

and they may not come back.

- You know, even if 50% come back,

is the town gonna be solvent?

Will it be able to sustain?

Are we gonna have the services?

A lot things that they don't have the answers,

they don't know.

- And not having the hospital now and not sure

what they're doing,

that was a big factor into Paradise's income

and the schools.

So that's, I don't know what's gonna come of all that.

- You do have to do some different things

in terms of how you build the town,

but you don't wanna do things that make it so expensive

and so difficult that people who want to come home just

don't, 'cause they can't.

- Most of the problem with the hitches we have is

the enormity of this disaster and the uniqueness of it.

We've not really seen a fire as huge as this is

where it's basically almost burned out an entire culture.

- The Federal Government and the State, yeah.

They'll help for a short time,

but what happens at the end of that?

So there's a lot of uncertainties,

still, moving forward.

- [Ev Durán] In the midst of this uncertainty,

another challenge arises, how to address the scars,

that hide just beneath the surface.

- It's very difficult to put that

and then losing everything you have.

And then now you're on top of that,

you're thinking about finances, where do you live?

I'm still homeless, five months later.

That's nobody's fault but my own.

But still, all this wrapped up together,

it goes like this, emotions go up and down.

Yeah, there's post traumatic stress with it, absolutely.

And it's gonna continue because there's a lot of

uncertainty still going on.

- [Ev Durán] While interviewing people for this film,

I heard the phrase "post traumatic stress disorder,"

or PTSD, quite frequently, and understandably so.

I wanted to speak to someone who could offer

valuable insight on the subject,

and maybe recommendations on how to work through it.

Fortunately, I was able to find Dr. Steven Thorp,

who is not just a Paradise High School graduate,

but also an expert in the field of PTSD.

And yes, this is Paradise, so obviously he's my cousin.

- PTSD is from a traumatic event,

which almost always is a life or death situation.

So it's either a serious injury or a risk of death

or the witnessing of death or serious injury.

One of the most common symptoms

is what we call hyper-vigilance,

which is a sense of being on guard all the time

after a traumatic event.

And that's very common in people with PTSD.

And so they're more edgy, they're more alert.

The people that I treat that have PTSD,

when they walk into a building,

can't just walk into a building and relax in that room.

They walk into the building

and they're immediately searching for exits,

they're immediately scanning the people in the room,

to see if the people are dangerous or if they have weapons,

and so they can never truly relax.

Not being able stop thinking about the traumatic event

and yet not wanting to think about it.

So having these unwanted memories

coming into mind is common.

Being worried about any stressors or what we call triggers.

So these are reminders of the event.

And so that's also very common with PTSD,

that they will avoid anything that reminds them

and the consequence is that their world

kind of gets smaller and smaller,

and sometimes ultimately so that they

can't leave the house anymore.

And so that's how we help people,

is kind of encouraging them to get back out

into the world even though it feels uncomfortable

in the short term.

One thing that we know is that people ironically

that do their best to avoid anything to do with that memory,

or anything to do with that situation

are the people who are most likely to get PTSD.

And so some people who survived the fires,

don't wanna think about it,

don't wanna talk about it,

don't wanna go back up to Paradise, understandably,

but that actually might make them more susceptible.

Now, anybody who goes through a really serious

traumatic event is gonna have some symptoms

from that even if they don't have full PTSD.

On the good side, as you're talking about, people

went through this as a group and the upside of that

is that they can support one another afterwards.

And one of the best predictors we have

for people being resilient to developing PTSD,

is social support.

It's one of the strongest predictors of not getting PTSD.

- [Ev Durán] Many victims of the Camp Fire

have found strength and solace in each other

aided by the largely unwavering social support

of neighboring communities.

- The surrounding community support was really amazing.

I mean, just all the free meals, free clothing,

so many donations that they literally

had to send donations back.

- If you go anywhere, if you talk to anyone that's not here,

they know what Paradise is and they have such empathy,

and they have such compassion.

People have given so much, so much,

I just can't even believe it.

- The people around here keep finding ways

to help each other out.

I'm just so proud of them and their resourcefulness,

the way they put things aside and they bring too much.

They were having to turn stuff away until later need

and the need it isn't just a one day, one week,

one month need as we see.

- We had a Thanksgiving with probably 60 people here

and they all, and the community, local

and extended community brought every bit of it.

So it's been really nice to see that people

will come together when it counts.

- We had a couple of big truckloads

of stuff come up from Vacaville.

Everything, just about all the clothes that I have,

all I had was what I had on.

And he's got more clothes than he's ever had at one time.

- Seems that way.

- It just, is mind blowing to me the level of support,

not only locally, but globally.

- [Ev Durán] As the story of Paradise began to spread

far and wide, our little town grew internationally famous.

And the generous spirit of total strangers from around

the world became the silver lining of this terrible tragedy.

The PHS baseball team was invited to play a game

on the same field as the San Francisco Giants.

The basketball teams were invited to watch

the Golden State Warriors up close.

And PHS football got an experience they'll never forget,

while visiting the San Francisco 49ers.

These are but a few of the examples of love

that was shared with Paradise.

- Rotary clubs all over the United States

are sending money, and it's just very encouraging

and it makes you feel really good about people.

- It restores your faith in humanity.

It's wonderful, the support that we've gotten,

not just locally with things like our Chamber,

pretty much taking in any business that wants to join now,

not even charging them

and doing this Ridge Rising campaign, that's fabulous,

to Chico providing us with offices

for three months I think.

To the ladies in Ireland who heard me on the news,

saying I really was so sad that I lost all my recipes,

and they sent me four cookbooks.

It's just all over the world.

- [Ev Durán] There's one more example

of the widespread generosity that the Mayor speaks of

that I'd like to share with you.

He's a man named Bob Wilson.

Like most people prior to the Camp Fire,

Bob had never even heard of Paradise.

You remember him from earlier?

- I knew nothing about Paradise, as a matter of fact,

I had to look it up on a map.

- [Ev Durán] When I visited Bob at his beautiful home

in Southern California,

I discovered that he is a prolific collector

of firefighter related keepsakes and memorabilia.

Which seems appropriate since he is now a hero

to countless victims of fire.

- I was reading the paper one morning

and there was an article.

This was a whole article about what these high school kids

would be missing as a result of the fire

and not being able to go back to Paradise High School.

For me, I got so much out of high school.

I really thought about these kids and the fact that

they were missing this particular episode in their life.

That's what prompted me to wanna do something.

I've always contended that good intentions,

unless acted upon are just good intentions.

So I decided I would act on this

and I decided to write a letter to the kids.

Then I thought, gee, I better put some substance behind it.

And the more I thought about it, I said,

I know what I'll do,

I'll just write a check for a thousand dollars

to each one, 980 kids.

- [Ev Durán] Yeah, you didn't mishear that,

980 kids times a thousand.

He also wrote checks to each

of the 105 staff members at PHS.

That's almost 1.1 million dollars given to people

in a town he had no prior connection to.

What'd I say? Hero.

- [Ev Durán] If you were invited back up for once

Paradise High School reopens,

would that'd be a trip that you would consider making?

- Well, as a matter of fact, I got a call

from the superintendent of schools.

She said, "we want you at the graduation."

And I had replied to her,

"look, even if you hadn't invited me,

I would have been at your graduation."

(fast upbeat music)

- [Ev Durán] As you can see, with the help of

countless volunteers from the community,

the school district was able to make

the campus safe and secure enough

to host the Paradise High School graduation.

The event drew a large crowd,

eager to celebrate the accomplishments

of these young people

and the continuing accomplishments of the town.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

I got this, this is gotta be your only picture

with a cop you got.

Hey, it's good seeing you, glad you're doing well.

- The reality of what has happened to us,

is that we will grieve forever.

We will not get over the loss of our community

but we will learn to live with it.

We will heal and we will rebuild ourselves

around the loss we have suffered.

(fast upbeat music continues)

- We will always carry a piece of PHS with us,

a memory of where we came from and what we overcame,

as we take off on our next great adventures.

(crowd chanting)

(crowd cheering)

- This is your night.

You are the ones to be commended for staying the course

despite the adversity that overtook your community.

(crowd cheering)

- You are the first generation of

Paradise High School graduates,

to rise from the ashes of what life was

and take a bold step forward into a new future.

- [Announcer] It is with great honor that we present

the Paradise High School graduating class of 2019.

You may now move your tassels to the left side

of your cap (indistinct)

(large crowd cheering)

(crowd clapping)

- We did it bro.

- We did it.

- Ben?

- Ben.

- He wanted to meet you, can we do a picture?

- Oh, I'd love to do a picture yeah, absolutely.

- How was graduation?

It was the best.

It was absolutely the best.

- Don't look at Ev's.

- [Ev Durán] Where do you think we are as a town?

Looking back at what happened

and sort of looking forward as well,

what have you learned?

What has the town learned?

- Well, I'm actually glad this happened

that I'm able to talk to you today because last night,

you and I were both at the high school graduation,

Paradise High School.

And that gave me great hope.

When I heard the words from the student speakers,

it was powerful.

And it was the words that,

there's a bunch of people in this town

that are working every day to bring back our community.

They're out there grinding every day,

and they're making a difference.

Because of that spirit I saw last night,

and because that spirit of these people that I know

that are working with the town, working with the county,

working with fellow residents to make it happen,

I have great faith in the resilience of the community.

We're going to rebuild, hopefully in the long run,

we can make an even better place than it was before.

But we have a long road, this is a marathon, not a sprint,

but we have the people here that can make that happen.

And I truly believe in the spirit of this community.

Paradise Strong, it's been said a lot,

but the spirit of this community is,

a depth that I don't think we'll reach the bottom of.

- Now we're at the point where all of these things that

you never thought would be impacted by this fire,

have been impacted.

And life is just so much more complicated.

It sounds cliche to say that the world changed,

but the world changed. When Paradise and Magalia and Concow

and all those other communities that were,

burned through, come back.

I know they'll come back eventually,

but it won't be the same,

there's just no way it can be the same.

But that's not to say that what we have

or what we will be able to do,

won't be great in its own right.

- People come here, they don't really wanna leave.

Even having lost their home,

even not knowing how certain the future might be,

they wanna be in Paradise.

They're gonna work that out here, not somewhere else,

and I really admire that spirit and that love of Paradise.

- I wanna see my family remain in Paradise

and I want to watch Paradise rebuild.

- Life is always in flux, it always changes,

and what you do with that, defines who you are as a person.

We've reinvented ourselves down here in Chico,

until we can get back up into Paradise,

and it's gonna be a lot of fun.

- It'll be the things that attracted us here

in the first place.

It still be, they'll be back.

The slower pace of life, the friendliness,

all the volunteerism in this community,

it's tons of people getting involved in making

this community a better place,

and all those things will be remembered,

and it'll be a driving force to bring people back.

They're going to want that again.

- We're pioneers, we're starting all over

and just like some of the names you'd see down

at the museum that were the first ones to come up.

That's us, it's our time.

It's why we need to engage,

we need to be involved and love on your community,

and the people that are here.

- Paradise is a very resilient and strong town,

and there's a lot that don't wanna leave that hill.

And they're gonna do whatever they have to,

to be able to rebuild and live there again.

- And I always kind of approach things from here

because I'm trying to envision,

how is it going to be to walk into the house?

So the beginning, here's the beginnings of the new house,

but here's the thing that just, I love.

In the whole backyard, we had a lawn, deck

and kind of a walkway Jim and I had put in,

and at this end of it, we had this small grove of bamboo.

Here's the bamboo.

It's like, it's been through fire, construction, bulldozers,

I mean the lot's been scraped clean, soil compacted,

and here's this dang bamboo coming up.

And I check on it every time, 'cause I just feel like,

Oh my gosh, it survived.

- [Ev Durán] Is there anything else I didn't ask you?

Did I miss anything that you wanna say?

- No, I don't think so.

- [Ev Durán] Nobody ever says yes, to that last question.

Nobody goes, yeah, yeah I got more stuff.

- No, I'm good.

- Nah, I don't know.

- I don't think so.

- I don't think so.

- No, I think you've covered it.

- [Ev Durán] Is there anything else you guys wanna add,

that I didn't ask you?

Anything you want people to know?

- That I do believe that there are people that,

and I know actually that there are people who have struggled

way harder and that I would like to help them.

And that we're just one of many people who have survived.

Our story was about just like the average of anybody.

Anybody could have been in our shoes.

Even though we were really close and a lot of people

went through what we went through.

And, but there are some people

who went through harder things

and I think that they should just, I wanna help them.

(fast upbeat rock music)

- [Ev Durán] But you know I didn't forget

about the football team.

(fast upbeat rock music continues)

- Hey, it's called nerves,

because you've been pissed off

for ten months!

Now you get to take it out.

Everybody heal tonight, play football.

Get down there, you have a crowd that loves you

and you're gonna be inspired by it.

You're all gonna be healed right now,

by getting down there, and kicking some butt.

Are you ready?

- Yes coach.

We win as brothers, we lose as brothers,

let's get it done,

Hey, brothers to the bone on three,

one, two, three.

- Brothers to the bone, wohoo.

(fast upbeat rock music continues)

- [Announcer] Lucas Hartley, touchdown Paradise.